Ars Alchemica: The Art & Alchemy of Transformation

“Our task is not to create more images of light, but to release the light that is trapped within the darkness.” ~ C.G. Jung

How do we evoke the light in the dark body? How do we embody the soul spark, bring it to consciousness, and live it more fully in our daily lives?

In this workshop, we will explore the impactful role of embodied experience and the spiritual dimensions of the healing process. Participants will have an opportunity to engage the Alchemical metaphor in relation to the embodied individuation process in healing and development. Elements from Jungian theory work will be interwoven and further integrated through movement, drawing, and discussion.

The Alchemists’ aim was to study nature and to learn from its profoundly regenerative capacities, discovering the ‘gold’ in matter. Alchemy’s basic elements can deepen our understanding of embodied transformative processes, experienced spontaneously through natural movement rooted in Jung’s Active Imagination process.

These practices bring awareness to what we least value, ‘cooking’ unwanted material to generate new life. Alchemy provides an ancient map of the stages in the individuation process: our journey to wholeness. Such a map can help orient people in their therapeutic work, particularly when they are immersed in unconscious material that may cause feelings of anxiety, impatience, or dissolution.

Tina’s Conference Presentation
August 27, 2017

Body & Soul in Transition

“The symbols of the Self arise in the depths of the body.” ~ C.G. Jung

Alchemy is most often understood as a primitive scientific attempt to create elemental gold, yet alchemy also sought the ‘inner gold’. So too, modern psychotherapy has the capacity to transform prima materia, the unwanted material of everyday life, into something meaningful, thus helping us find the ‘gold’ in the shadow.

In this presentation images will be shown from a painter’s journey in becoming her true self, the treasure we all seek. Her images take us from life’s earliest beginnings, through the stages of growth, death, dismemberment, despair and new life reshaped by the transformative elements of fire, water, wind, and earth. Here we see the alchemical process at work. Participants will have an opportunity to witness the process as a whole, and to engage the alchemical metaphor in relation to bodily experience.

Conference Information:

The ancient art of alchemy – the transformation of base materials into a nobler form – continues to captivate the imaginations of artists, poets, scholars, seekers – and depth psychologists. One of the earliest material technologies found throughout the world, many alchemical traditions over time developed into highly elaborate esoteric systems until nearly being eclipsed at the dawn of the modern scientific era. C.G. Jung was synchronistically introduced to Daoist alchemy through Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower, catapulting Jung into the world of alchemy, capturing his imagination and profoundly influencing his scholarly output for the remainder of his life.

This weekend symposium draws upon the rich influence of Jung’s alchemical psychology, while expanding it for a new generation of scholars, seekers, and practitioners. Scholars of alchemy and Jungian analysts of international renown join to offer diverse perspectives of cross-cultural alchemical systems and their implications for analytical practice and personal growth and transformation. Join us at Pacifica for this inter-disciplinary odyssey into the rich and diverse worlds of alchemy and depth psychology as they are brought into creative dialogue.